If I Could Save You Would You Even Care?
by vampireincognito
Summary: and the big shiny smiles would creep up in his sleep and eat him from the inside out. A/U


And If I Could Save You Would You Even Care

Staring out over the tempestuous seas, I couldn't help feel that Zuko's mawkish words at the funeral had been slightly facetious. " I loved her like a heretic loves sin; I would rather pore over her skin than the best book any day; to abnegate breath would be a far better fate than to have her presence not in this world." He always was adept with words, and in this case, he won over the dead girls' family in a heartbeat. Vindicating his story to an audience that would believe him even if he were telling them their precious daughter was a unicorn. Personally, I found his sappy little speech filled with flawlessly incorporated levity. It was all a joke to him.

I wasn't quite sure why he was even there. He didn't even really know Olivia. Then again, neither did I. She was just a girl, who went to school, who stayed out of trouble, who got average grades, who was on the JV soccer team. She was your average student. Well, your average student who got killed by a psychopath.

But nobody knew that. They all believed the story they were spoon fed by the newspapers and the police. Olivia had been meeting her new, secret boyfriend, Zuko, at the abandoned train station at midnight. They were carelessly fooling around. All caught up in their "love." And the next thing you know, one of the supports upholding the overhang is broken as is Olivia's body. If the cops had scoured the scene in a punctilious fashion they would have noticed the distinct cracks on the dilapidated structure that appear when it is hammered. They would have noticed the bloodstains in places there couldn't possibly be bloodstains if the girl had truly only been crushed.

Zuko had a way with these people. They always believed him. He told them the tragic story of Olivia's death when they found him sitting on his knees in front of the rubble at the station, a dead, bleeding girl in his arms. He even shed a tear. It was his smooth looks and guile that made him so damn persuasive. So deadly.

The cops, being the law-enforcing citizens they are, checked out the scene after the body was wheeled away with a grief stricken Zuko at the heel. It looked exactly as Boris had said; the death was purely circumstantial, and an unfortunate accident.

Where Zuko is concerned, though, it is never an accident.

This wasn't the first time.

And if Zuko had his way, it certainly wouldn't be the last.

So we were traveling again. Away from the last girl, on to the next. From Small town to small town we went, staying long enough for Zuko to do his sick work. He called it "revenge." It was no less revenge that a living cow is dinner.

And I wasn't even sure who he was trying to take this revenge on. Those girls had nothing to do with what had happened to Zuko except the simple coincidence that their fathers sold insurance. That was the only connection. Zuko had twisted it; he had spent so much time sitting in his corner, clutching his rabbit to his breast, twisting that memory. It consumed him. He was in and out of his mind for months. His parents couldn't have cared less. They were too famous, too out of touch. The nannies just thought he was

Antisocial and were too busy sitting on the sofa, eating out of the expensively stocked refrigerator and smoking their fancy little cigarettes to even notice.

So Zuko stayed in that corner, haunting himself to pieces. This tiny child, possessed with constant nightmares of a suited stranger with that big shiny smile. He was too little to know that a smile can be misleading. This tiny child with no one who loves him enough to reach out a hand or an ear to help him out of his misery. This tiny child, with nothing, except a stuffed bunny and dark shadows around his eyes and holes in his heart and the shadows leaking through. Until I came.

And now this tiny child was this big man. With his own big, shiny, misleading smile. Taking revenge on his personal devil by murdering the daughters of its kind.

We rattled along the coast in that train for a few hours. Zuko was in his own mind, with his head in his hands and his knees pulled up to his chest. I stared out into the ocean. I watched for the explosion of a whale's blowhole and even convinced myself that I spotted one, though secretly I knew it was my imagination. It was an old trick, like a mirage of sorts. If you want to see something enough, your brain will make it appear to you. Like those poor people trapped in a never-ending desert, with nothing surrounding them but the promise of more golden sand. Soft winds blur the edges of the mountainous piles of the ground rock, and all they want is a drop of water. So before their eyes, their minds grants them one last vision of a small pool of fresh drink seeping from a secret well before they take their final breaths.

I wasn't quite sure where we were going next. And I was pretty sure Boris had no idea himself. We just got on this train and hoped it would take us far away from Olivia in Arcata. And away from Julia in Ashland, and Sophie in Port Townsend, and Emily in Seattle. Please let it take us away from all of that pain.

Of course, when we left one source of pain, we became the cause of more.

" Let's get off here."

Without lifting his head to look at me, Zuko uttered these commanding words. I checked where we were. Just outside of Santa Rosa. I had nothing against the place, so as soon as the train stopped, we were off it, making our way through the plumes of smoke and crowds to find a hotel to stay the night in.

Zuko wasn't a talkative twenty one year old. Sure, when he was in one of his murderous charades he was the perfect companion with the smoothest, heart pattering words that could just melt your ears. But when he was alone, with me, he was quiet and brooding. Rarely spoke. Except on those special nights when he would spill his heart out to me. But even then, there wasn't much said. He didn't have much of a heart to spill anymore. Most had been corroded by years of torturous anxiety. So out of respect for him, I too did not often speak, and even when I did it was in mostly yes or no questions. We communicated mostly in silent. Over the years we had formed many ways of talking without the use of a voice.

We found a comfortable Motel 8 to spend the night in; nowhere near even three stars but not as seedy as some of the places Zuko and I have frequented. At least it had hot, running water that didn't feel like you are bathing in Oobleck when you turned the shower on.

I needed to clean myself of the day, so I stepped into the bathroom as Zuko pulled out his laptop and began typing away like a man possessed. Which I suppose he was. Possessed with the need for revenge from what that man did to him.

It was the same every time. We would arrive in the city, get a temporary place to stay, and Zuko would look up all the insurance agencies in the town with his computer. With this information, he would research until he found a girl near his age connected to a man in one of these agencies, preferably a daughter, though Sophie had been a niece.

Then he would put on his mask and enter her life. She would fall in love with him. His mask was beautifully carved, there was no way to possibly see through it to the trembling scared kid turned psychopath it hid so very shrewdly.

He would attach his claws onto her heart, and then crush it.

I got out of the shower an put on my nightgown, one of the two articles of clothing I own. Towel drying my hair, I walked over and sat down next to Boris on the bed. I didn't notice anything was wrong in the beginning. I sat down next to him and looked at the screen. I recognized the name of the man whose face glared up at me through the screen. I spun to look at Zuko, to see how he was taking this.

Zuko's eyes were glazed over. I could have sworn I saw a single tear slip down his cheek into non-existence. That was probably another mirage though. My brain giving me hope that maybe Zuko was still human. Maybe.

He stood up.

I stood up.

He looked at me and his face held an indescribable expression. Like the entire world had caved in. Like the weight of all those poor girls souls had just landed on his. Like a kid getting the pony they had always wanted for their birthday. Like waking up from a bad dream and being so happy to leave. Like waking up from a good dream and wanting more than life to go back. To slip back into that made up world where the one thing you want more than anything is finally within your grasp. Like opening the door to your huge lonely house to find a big shiny smile and big shiny hands that reach for you and don't let you go and go places you never wanted any big shiny hands to go or big shiny smiles to see and all you want to do is wake up but you already woke up and its still here and it's big and shiny and it's your life and you want to escape but you can't because it has you and you want to cry but you can't because it's been so long and there's no one to talk to but yourself who isn't even you anymore.

And Zuko pulled out his knife. And his dad furrowed his brow up from the computer screen at him.

And I backed up. And my dad looked up at me from the computer screen with a dark look in his big, shiny, insurance salesman eyes.

And Zuko's big shiny wounded smile glinted off his bug shiny wounding knife and it found its place in my stomach. In the place where I had been connected to and then cut from the woman who had been connected to the man on the computer.

And Zuko fell bleeding to the ground with the knife plunged into his stomach.

" _Why hello," I said, not wanting to seem rude. " What is your name?"_

" _I know you," he replied, not looking up from his bunny. " You're the one in my head. You keep me company when the whole worlds gone gray."_

" _I'm glad you know me," I say to the little boy in the corner. " Let me save you."_

_And I held him in a warm embrace and from that moment never left his side._

_I was the only one to protect him in his dreams._

_And now he needed me here too._

_To save him from the smiles._

_The big shiny smiles,_


End file.
